Smart tips to run effective retargeting campaigns over Christmas

Christmas is by far my favourite time of the year. Oh yes sure, it is very commercial, but it brings out the child in me..and I love it.

Now, how can we capitalize on the commercial aspect of this festive season?

Did you know that only 2% of shoppers typically convert on their first visit to an online store, according to AdRoll?

Well with smart retargeting campaigns we can attempt to reach out to those 98% giving them many more chances to convert by serving targeted ads to them via search, social media, and other websites.

Pixel based retargeting
This is the most basic form which serves ads to people more frequently after they have left a publisher's website. Retargeting marks or tags online users who visit a certain brand website with a pixel or cookie. And is available through Google’s display network (remarketing), on Facebook and Twitter too.

But with so many options available we decided to help you out with some recommendations:

1. Promote specific content
Try and be as targeted as possible. For example I love Jimmy Choo’s online shop. And I also love their shoes. A smart way to reach me would be to serve ads to me based on the shoe categories that I look at. Whereas they could serve ads related to their bags to another user looking at their accessories. This would ensure an improved ROI.

Another trick is to serve the same content to past visitors. According to some e-shops this could increase your ROI considerably while lowering your CPA (cost per acquisition).

2. Promote your best content in a smart way
You don’t just need to push products, but you can use retargeting to drive traffic to your blog, which increases your credibility. So, for example you can:

target your website visitors

exclude the visitors who have read the content you are pushing through retargeting

And you can use an ad combining it with contextual targeting

But use your google analytics as a guide to determine your most popular type of content in terms of social shares and conversion rates.

3. Reach people through alternative avenues
If a user on your website is not converting, then you can try and reach them by setting up retargeting ads on Facebook, or on Twitter or on Google, or entice them to download an e-book or article or provide them with a freebie.

4. Events
Christmas is a great time to retarget customers by offering discounts, vouchers or whatever works for your industry.

5. Focus on users with potential
It is more efficient to focus on users with potential. For example users who have opened your email in the past

And forget about users who have bounced from your website, as these people are obviously not interested in your offering.

Having said that though, you could attempt to retarget users who don’t open your emails using Facebook ads, as they might just be missing your emails because maybe your emails are ending in their spamming folder.

6. Utilize price sensitivity
If you know that you lost many people / potential customers due to your high prices, then you can attempt to re-target them by offering them discounted prices.

7. Capitalize on your LinkedIn connections
Something that we often overlook is the value that we can obtain from LinkedIn, especially if we have a wide network there. Did you know that you could download the list of your LinkedIn connections and their email addresses? And then you can use this list to create a Facebook or Twitter ads and drive them towards a landing page on your website.

Well, I hope you find the above useful. Feel free to contact us at info@blenddigital.com if we can help you in any way.

And I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a smashing Christmas and a glorious 2016.